Baikonur

Baikonur is where the space age started. Built on the Kazakh steppe in the mid-1950s, the cosmodrome launched Sputnik 1 in October 1957 and Yuri Gagarin in April 1961 — and it is still in use today, the oldest and largest working spaceport on Earth. Every Soviet first that mattered left the ground from there.

The Slava Baikonur watches commemorate it, and most of them carry the Mir space station on the dial rather than the launch site itself — Mir being the thing Baikonur was sending up when these were made. They come from the Second Moscow Watch Factory: roughly 43 mm across, 11 mm thick, 18 mm lugs, hand-wound or self-winding, usually with a day/date calendar. You will also find the occasional Pobeda, Poljot or ZiM carrying the Baikonur name.

Like most Soviet space commemoratives these were civilian watches sold to a public that followed the programme closely — not issued equipment. That is exactly why they are affordable now. Each one below has been serviced, tested and photographed individually.

See also Buran, Soyuz, the full Slava collection and our wider space-themed Soviet watches.